1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for collecting a used toner in a laser printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an electrophotographic printer has: a photoconductive medium such as a photoconductive drum; a charging apparatus to charge a surface of the photoconductive drum to an electric potential of a predetermined level; an LSU(Laser Scanning Unit) to scan a laser beam on the charged surface of the photoconductive drum; a developing unit to perform developing by supplying a toner to an electrostatic latent image region formed on the photoconductive drum by the scanned laser beam; a transferring unit to transfer the toner developed on the photoconductive drum to a printing paper; and a used toner collecting apparatus to collect the used toner by cleaning the used toner remaining on the surface of the photoconductive drum.
In the above construction, the used toner collecting apparatus has: a cleaning blade in contact with the photoconductive drum to scrape off the used toner on the photoconductive drum; and a used toner collecting bucket to accommodate the used toner collected by the cleaning blade. At a toner entry port of the used toner collecting bucket, the cleaning blade is installed. The used toner collected by the cleaning blade is accumulated at the toner entry port of the toner collecting bucket and gradually pushed into the inside of the toner collecting bucket. If the toner collecting bucket is filled with the used toner collected in this way, the toner collecting bucket is thrown away and replaced by a new one.
But, according to the above construction, the used toner may be excessively accumulated between the cleaning blade and the toner entry port of the toner collecting bucket. In this case, the function of the cleaning blade deteriorates due to the excessively accumulated used toner, and further the used toner is not efficiently transferred into the inside of the toner collecting bucket. Also, the toner entry port of the toner collecting bucket is blocked before the used toner is evenly filled up within the toner collecting bucket.